


the right match

by leviadrache



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 07:50:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4911319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviadrache/pseuds/leviadrache
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nozomi thinks she found her soul mate, but things can't be this easy. There's more than one person with a mark that matches hers and one special person without any mark at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the right match

At sixteen, Nozomi meets her soul mate. A girl just one year younger than herself, with long and dark hair, similar to hers. Someone who is passionate about everything she does. So of course, she doesn't question anything about the mark on her left wrist, a lily with four small blossoms visible. It looks just like the one on Umi's right wrist, a lily with three big blossoms. Sure, they're not one hundred percent the same, but it's about finding a matching mark, not the exact copy of it, right?

Umi is clever and a pleasant person to be around. They get along pretty well, even right after they met. Sometimes Nozomi thinks Umi is too stiff, sometimes a little boring, but overall they don't have any problems with each other. It doesn't take long for Nozomi to start to love Umi.

Just sometimes she thinks it's quite lonely with just the two of them.

It's a winter afternoon when Umi arrives at Nozomi's flat with a short haired girl that has the brightest smile Nozomi has ever seen. Next to her, Umi's scowl becomes even more obvious.

"What's up?" Nozomi asks. Being soul mates and everything, they've established that it's okay to show up at each others place without having to call every time. But Umi usually calls or texts before she comes to visit Nozomi. To see her standing in front of her door with a stranger and without any warning definitely makes Nozomi curious. The other girl seems a little confused too, but she keeps smiling at Nozomi, as if she was trying really hard to seem polite. "Oh, but feel free to come in first," she smiles at the short girl.

Umi nods. Nozomi takes them to their room. They all sit down on her bed. "That's Rin," Umi explains, then turns to Rin. "Rin, like I told you, this is Nozomi. Would you mind showing her your wrist?"

"Oh, yeah, sure!" Rin pulls her black wristband off to reveal a small lily pattern on her skin. It's a white lily, even smaller than Umi's, but it is one. A white lily.

The world is a huge place and your soul mate mark can be anything. From flowers and plants to letters and any kind of symbols that seem to have no meaning at all. Nozomi believes in signs of fate when she sees them. Her relationship with Umi has always been really nice, so if fate has another soul mate for them, so shall it be. Three people just couldn't have the same mark by chance.

There are stories about people who have spent decades searching, before they gave up and settled with one of the many people who don't have any mark at all. It's a little unusual, since most people with a mark either wait until they find their soul mate or die alone, but it does happen. However if you do find the person who matches you, the two of you were meant to be together. There's not a single story about someone who found their soul mate and refused to be with them.

To find a third person with a matching mark? Nozomi has no idea if _this_ had ever happened before and the looks on Umi's and Rin's face let her figure out that they don't know either.

When neither of them speaks up, Nozomi clears her throat, making Umi look at her.

"Fate does surprising things sometimes, doesn't it? Guess we'll be sharing from now on."

* * *

It is more lively with Rin. She doesn't seem to think before she speaks, but she's a honest and lovely girl. Despite their worries, the relationship settles quite easily. She complements well with Umi and makes Nozomi fall in love even more with each of them. Of course, other people think of the three of them being together as weird, but they're soul mates, so no one can really argue. When Nozomi casually calls Rin and Umi her  _girlfriends_ , people would scowl at them, but can't voice their remarks and comments after they saw the matching marks on their wrists. At least not for the three of them to hear.

Compared to Umi and Nozomi, Rin is less organized. She acts intuitive. Unsurprisingly her room is nothing but a mess. On one evening in spring, Umi suggest they should clean it up together. "It's not that bad," Nozomi says. "I don't really mind," Rin insists, but in the end, neither of them care enough to actually argue with Umi Once she settled for something, it's pretty much impossible for the two to convince Umi of something else. Funnily Nozomi even looks forward to cleaning up with the other two. They didn't get to do much casual stuff together lately, because each of them is busy in their own way.

So right on the next day, they meet at Rin's place and spent hours in her room. Umi has everything planned out, "because organisation is  _vital_." So when they're done and Umi finally looks content, Rin and Nozomi let themselves fall onto Rin's bed, exhausted. Their heads collide against each other, but it doesn't really hurt. Rin's bed is very comfortable. Soon, Nozomi feels the mattress dip even further and here's Umi snuggling against her.

Rin laughs. In the blink of an eye, she has rolled over Nozomi's body to lie in the small space between the two others.

"Rin! Your elbow _hurts_."

"But Umi-chan, it's not fair! I want to lie next to you, too."

"Yeah, Umi- _chan_ ," Nozomi says, thinking about the new ring to her girlfriend's name. She only started adding the "chan" when Rin did, but she quite likes, well,  _loves_  the sound of it. "Making pure girls like us fall for you like this. You're really unfair sometimes."

Umi bites her lips at that, but there's not much more time to see expression on her face change. Rin hides it by pressing a kiss to Umi's face, though when she pulls away, Umi's face is plenty red. Nozomi considers this as a win-win.

* * *

It's in summer two years later.

Her friend Eli doesn't believe in soul mates. Because it's silly and doesn't make sense and there's no value in anything you don't decide for yourself. To be honest, she's an odd person. Nobody else ever questions the matter of soul mates, really. Either you have a mark or you don't. Nozomi knows some people without a mark would envy those who have one, because those marks do carry a certain value in society. People respect the ones chosen by fate.

To hear someone say they don't believe in soul mates, so blunt and yet so  _convinced_ , Nozomi was surely caught off-guard back then. "But," she had asked quickly, because she had felt Eli's calculating gaze on her, "don't you believe in love?"

She would always remember the way Eli tilted her head at the question, looked at Nozomi and said, with a voice that carried even more confidence than usual, "Of course I do."

Something else Eli doesn't say hangs in the air after she said those words. Something Nozomi wants to hear and at the same time doesn't, but for the first time, she thinks it's possible that soul mates aren't  _everything_  fate can hold for you.

From that time on, Nozomi doubts more things, wonders about things she used to treat as normal. Never once does she doubt her love for Umi and Rin, but she thinks of it in new, different ways. She loves Umi for being honest, strict and soft at the same time. Not just because of the mark on her wrist. She loves Rin for her cheerfulness, how she can't sit still for a minute and the way she blushes when gets called cute by Umi or Nozomi.

She thinks she loves Eli, too. It's not a conclusion that came to her easily, but one she firmly believes in now. There's no exact moment she can point at and say, _that's when I fell in love_. She just knows she did. After starting to just love the way Eli thinks and speaks and acts, it was just too easy to fall for everything else.

But since Nozomi doesn't know what to do about this, so she does nothing for the next few weeks. If she was on her own, she probably would have kept doing that. Ignoring the matter completely. Although neither of her girlfriends say anything, she is sure they notice something was off. She trusts them after all.

When she has figured out the thoughts running through her mind and finally asks the other two, "say, what if there were someone else I  _liked_?", both Umi and Rin start laughing.

"Is that what you've been thinking about all this time?", Umi asks. "I thought you already knew I don't mind sharing."

"The more the merrier," Rin says and leans forward to take Nozomi's right hand into hers. Umi grabs her right one and Nozomi feels much lighter than before.

Who was she to doubt fate when it brought her not just one wonderful girlfriend, but two? What Eli's opinion about this question will be, she really doesn't know. But she feels reassured by the two people holding her hands.


End file.
